Today’s ACIM lesson, #311, I judge all things as I would have them be is the return to innocence. It is a recognition that the subtle ways the ego wants to continue to judge are, in truth, attempts to maintain specialness and make the separation real. But ego’s efforts to continue judging harshly are really what keeps me imprisoned. I cannot enjoy the loveliness that surrounds me if I’m busy condemning it. Instead, this lesson teaches to allow God’s assessment stand as the truth of reality. It’s a much nicer version than ego would have us experience. Today’s lesson, from last year’s writing:

As I Would Have Them Be

There are subtle ways that ego attempts to continue the illusion of separation. Perhaps its favorite is specialness. Specialness is wrought through judgment. Instead of seeing with Christ’s Vision that sees all people/places/things through the eyes of love, when I’m steeped in specialness, I size things up (compare and contrast) and decide what merits my good favor. It’s subtle, oh so subtle. As the “teacher,” I catch myself teaching with the quiet goal of demonstrating how good I am at practicing this stuff. These subtle efforts towards proving superiority are ego-driven. Even problems are subtle games of one-upmanship. We drag out our complaints of situations and lay them on the table to show the “others” that our complaints are more worthy of attention than theirs are.

Sigh.

This is what I’m noticing as I arrive at the section about the Last Judgment. Now, as a child, I was taught that the Last Judgment was an event to be feared. It was used as a threat to ensure that little children did as they were told and toed the line. God forbid we fail to confess our sins and suddenly, Jesus returned while we weren’t looking or we’d all be doomed to hell. But the Course makes it clear that the Last Judgment isn’t a tool for making us keep our noses clean, it is an act of Love. “God’s Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have.” (“Seemed” being the operative word here!) This is part of why I so love the Course. Rather than make me feel bad, it sweeps me into the arms of Love and ensures me that all is well.

The longer I do these lessons, the more I weep in gratitude at God’s mercy. It is so much kinder, so much gentler to see with Christ’s vision, where innocence washes clean all thoughts of guilt and condemnation.

Christ’s Second Coming gives the Son of God this gift: to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment is in which perception ends. At first you see a world that has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.

The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ’s sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless.

You who believed that God’s Last Judgment would condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth: God’s Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God’s saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity.

God’s Final Judgment is as merciful as every step in His appointed plan to bless His Son, and call him to return to the eternal peace He shares with him. Be not afraid of love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free.

This is God’s Final Judgment: “You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am your Father and you are My Son.”

Lesson 311

I judge all things as I would have them be.

Judgment was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what it is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. And then it makes of it what you would have it be. It judges what it cannot understand, because it cannot see totality and therefore judges falsely. Let us not use it today, but make a gift of it to Him Who has a different use for it. He will relieve us of the agony of all the judgments we have made against ourselves, and re-establish peace of mind by giving us God’s Judgment of His Son.

Father, we wait with open mind today, to hear Your Judgment of the Son You love. We do not know him, and we cannot judge. And so we let Your Love decide what he whom You created as Your Son must be.

It’s time to turn over egoic judgment to Him who knows how to judge truly. The Holy Spirit and I are becoming good buddies. I mean, seriously. I have to call on Him throughout the day, every day to try to keep myself on track.

All virtues can morph into vices the moment they are used as a weapon of judgment to indulge in holier-than-thou behavior. Our egoic minds tell us we are the exceptions; we are special. We deny that what we are witnessing is “us,” stamp guilt on the “other,” and proceed on our merry way, oblivious to our own behavior.

The point here is not to make ourselves as guilty as we judge everyone else to be, it is to realize that what is illusion is not Truth. It’s not that we have to work really hard to purify ourselves. “You need do nothing.” The attempt to “do” something to become pure is just another ego attempt at specialness.

We already are that which we think we have to work to become. You see, even the “work” is another subtle attempt at making the separation real; at keeping apart that which never was separate.